English

 In the context of more and more efficient building research, as passive house or Energy plus building, the occupants have become a central actor of building system. In order to integrate them in the design phase of a building, it is proposed to complete the classical definition of “energy efficiency” with the concept of “usage energy efficiency”. This concept integrates the notion of satisfaction and energy consumption which are summarized in a compromise decision plane.

Automatic optimization and degradation detection tool for HVAC primary system was developed. It synchronizes with Building Energy Management System (BEMS), and it does optimization and degradation diagnosis automatically. Generally, the tools based on the simulation are low generality because of the complex input. Therefore, the targeted system of this tool is limited to the primary system that is specific standard configuration to reduce the input data. The optimization function outputs the best set point according to the outside temperature and the load etc.

The diversity of non-domestic buildings at urban scale poses a number of difficulties to develop building stock models. This research proposes an engineering-based bottom-up stock model in a probabilistic manner to address these issues. School buildings are used for illustrating the application of this probabilistic method. Two sampling-based global sensitivity methods are used to identify key factors affecting building energy performance.

This study reported a series of wind tunnel experiments on the spatial distribution of the pressure drag acting on the walls of rectangular block arrays, which were arranged in staggered, square, and diamond layouts under the conditions of different packing densities. The obtained bulk pressure coefficients of a block located in various staggered arrays showed clear dependency of packing density.

In this paper a user model for the use of windows based on measurements in residential buildings is developed. Detailed literature review provides an overview of existing user models. Most of them base on measurements in office buildings and their validity for residential buildings is questionable. All models are based on different kinds of statistical methods.  After detailed assessment of these methods and the analysis of their applicability to the measurements, a new methodological approach is applied, to take the auto-correlation in the longitudinal data into account.

The study, conducted in composite climate of India, exhibits improvement in energy efficiency of a conditioned building block with the use of energy conservation measures (ECMs) recommended by National Energy Conservation Building Code (ECBC). In first part of it, subject building model was individually applied with five ECMs and two combinations of these ECMs by using constant thermostat settings. Similarly in second part of the study the same was done with adaptive thermostat settings.

The paper presents combined approaches dedicated to assess the thermal comfort in a tropical climate. UrbaWind, an automatic computational fluid dynamics code, was developed to model the wind in urban environments. A module was recently added to assess the buildings’s natural cross ventilation.

This paper describes a modelling comparison between three very similar medium sized educational buildings located in the temperate climate of Nelson, New Zealand, each designed using structural systems made primarily of timber (actually built), concrete or steel (both hypothetical).  The buildings were analysed using two different insulation values in the thermal envelope, one sufficient to comply with the New Zealand Building Code and another with ““best practice”” insulation levels.

Discrepancies between simulated and actual occupant behaviour can offset the actual energy consumption by several orders of magnitude compared to simulation results. Thus, there is a need to set up guidelines to increase the reliability of forecasts of environmental conditions and energy consumption. Simultaneous measurement of the set-­‐point of thermostatic radiator valves (trv), and indoor and outdoor environment characteristics was carried out in 15 dwellings in Denmark in 2008. Linear regression was used to infer a model of occupants’ interactions with trvs.

A mathematical model to simulate an unsaturated highly capacitive porous medium on roof (sand) is considered in order to predict its effects on building passive cooling. The present methodology is based on the theory of Philip and De Vries, using the thermophysical properties for different types of porous medium (building envelope) with different chemical composition and porous size distribution. The governing equations were discretized using the finite-volume method for describing the physical phenomena of heat and mass transfer in unsaturated porous medium.